


Winning the War

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Babies, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Operation Genoa, Post - Season 2, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 15:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She has to believe that their victory in this war of attrition won’t be hollow.</i> Dantana's law suit enters the discovery phase, and MacKenzie is ten days late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winning the War

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** My response to [this](http://lilacmermaid25.tumblr.com/post/87852374655/prompt-mac-finds-out-shes-pregnant-after-a) prompt from lilacmermaid25. I know I'm behind on replying to comments/commenting, but I swear I will be on top of that as soon as I am awake and functioning. (It's almost 5 AM here, whoops.)

MacKenzie McHale has won the war.

But it seems like Nina Howard is in it to make it a Pyrrhic victory.

Nina Howard is the gift that keeps on giving. In a turn of events that has surprised absolutely no one in the Atlantis World Media rumor mill; who kept apprised as to how Will unceremoniously dumped Nina in the morning show green room, Mrs. Macbeth has shown up as the newest addition to Jerry Dantana’s witness list.

Which is, in Mac’s opinion, absolutely _stunning_ from a woman who entered into a relationship with a man who, in _her_ full knowledge, _was in love with someone else_.

Mac smiles bitterly, reading through the newest brief from legal, and squeezes the fingers on her left hand together. Her rather ostentatious engagement ring interlocked with her new wedding band. Everyone, from legal, to her and Will, to the staff, to the gossip blogs, knows it’s not a coincidence that Nina signed on to testify two weeks after she and Will eloped a week after five days of the Boston Marathon Bombing pushed them to unprecedented levels of _fuck it._

They skirted around the fight all week, Will looking apologetically at her at every meeting and meal until finally Rebecca sent down the preliminary witness statement and Mac looked over it once, threw it down on the table, and retreated to her office without another word.

It appears that Mrs. Macbeth knows _exactly_ what she’s doing.

And that the _News Night_ staff had their own list of preferential names for _her_ , that _she_ and the staff were preoccupied by _her_ presence, that it was a disruption, that _she_ and Will were a disruption. That Will was high the night of the broadcast, because he told _her_ as much. (Apparently, and Mac laughed bitterly, again, temper rising.) That Will is immature and too concerned with the ratings, and Genoa seemed like his kind of ploy, that the night Maggie and Gary returned from Africa after the shooting _she_ was with him and that he was on the phone with Mac for hours, consoling her.

And then, of course, the felony wiretapping allegations she could level against Reese.

The entire embarrassment of the voicemail. Right up there on pain level with the ring.

Nina’s done well, Mac thinks, and the woman hasn’t even been deposed yet.

Which she as much as shouted at Will a few hours ago, after she got sick of staring at the apologetic face. Which then spiraled into a very loud discussion about the multitudes of personal and professional betrayals that dating Nina Howard had entailed, which apparently Will hadn’t entertained or investigated as thoroughly as MacKenzie had, in the depths of her heartsickness. And then barked a laugh at Will from across her desk, and callously called herself the psychotically jealous ex.

_I was good at it, wasn’t I? Goddammit, you had to dump her in the green room after she told you to do exactly what you wanted to?_

And then he dragged Wade into it, since she all but threw it on the table. Wade, and Brian, which turned into her bringing up him torturing her with Brian, _because of the voicemail_ , and before she knew it was almost midnight, the newsroom was empty, and they were screaming at each other about marriage vows and his and hers complex PTSD and how they were supposed to have left this in 2012.

So she kicked him out, and told him she’d be home in a few hours.

She squeezes the fingers on her left hand together again, and laughs, before carding her fingers through her hair. Their first blowout fight as a couple. Mac spares another glance to the calendar in her computer, and laughs harder.

A week and a half late.

She’s probably pregnant, because only MacKenzie McHale, even at age 39 with several abdominal adhesions and a stress level out the door, would get pregnant a month off birth control.

Because her appointment to get an IUD inserted instead of using her old birth control method had to be missed because _someone decided to blow up Boston_. And she _forgot_. Well, they _both_ forgot, and now it’s past 3 AM and Mac has to decide if she wants to wake up some poor member of her staff to get her a pregnancy test because there is no fucking way in hell she’s going home with a “maybe” and the closest 24 hour CVS is four blocks away and in Times Square and the photogs are after her again, since Nina’s dragged the love triangle of stupidity and denial back into public view.

So she detours.

Cursing the entire time, because Will keeps texting her asking if she’s still at AWM or going back to someone else’s place, because it’s past closing at Hang Chews and he wants to make sure she’s safe.

_I’m fine. Home in an hour._

And then wants to hit herself in the face with something, because of course he’s waiting up for her, and he’s probably beating himself up, because he promised to never hurt her again and she’s tried to explain that that doesn’t mean they can’t fight. They fight. They’re combative and stubborn by nature. It just means that they don’t walk out on each other.

So she gets her hands on a pregnancy test. Seven, actually, which is accomplished by detouring to Sloan’s apartment and dragging her out of bed where Don is also sleeping, and very quietly explaining an abbreviated version of the night’s events and a very, very abbreviated version of _god has conspired against me because we’re staring down a jury trial and I might be five weeks pregnant,_ at which point Sloan almost shouts, but doesn’t, and Mac spends a very tense twenty minutes on Sloan’s couch while Sloan runs out to the Walgreen’s down the block from her, after very gently (for Sloan) teasing that this must have been what it was like to have female friends in college.

It’s not like she and Will _haven’t_ talked about kids, she thinks, clenching her hands together on top of her knees. Her BlackBerry vibrates.

_Do you want me to wait up?_

They spoke about kids seven years ago. About when would be a good time for her to take time off from her career, and how they never thought about it, before each other, and other stupid things that got blown up once she was huddling in closets in Baghdad while the base was getting shelled and hiding from rocket launchers in caves and watching marines get their legs blown off and going to ground zero for drone strikes and seeing children with missing limbs in hospital beds. And suddenly things were drawn into stark contrasts, Pakistani drone strike victims and Iraqi orphans to the blue-eyed child she could be cradling in her arms if she wasn’t _such a fucking idiot_.

 _I hear a baby crying and I don’t think that it’s hungry, I think that it’s dying,_ she explained to him after the Sandy Hook broadcast. _But I want kids. I want our kids, who don’t know how to say “aluminum” because Mummy and Daddy pronounce it two different ways and your hair ‘cause mine sucks but my eyes so they can weasel whatever they want out of you and I can make fun of you for it—I’ve waited almost eight fucking years for our kids, goddammit._

Sighing, she can’t decide if she’s more pissed or nervous or what the fuck even she is. They said “maybe” to kids after Sandy Hook but Genoa has been driving them both to weekly therapy sessions and he’s talking about his father and she’s talking about the Middle East and they’re staring down each other’s demons and it’s not the time, but when the hell have she and Will ever been timely?

“Maybe,” but not “yes” because they’re both a _bit_ of a mess right now, and they could both be out of jobs, and Jerry’s suing them both in addition to AWM and one day their baby—if there is a baby—is going to google them and read about how their daddy was screwing Nina Howard while in love with Mummy _and they are going to have pay to send their baby to so much therapy._

On the other hand, Mac thinks, biting her lip and staring at her BlackBerry, it could be stress.

She told him an hour forty minutes ago. Forty-five minutes, once Sloan stumbles back inside with a plastic shopping bag full (which is the metric for three boxes, each a different brand) of over the counter pregnancy tests.

“I do have a husband,” she reminds her, and slips back out to hail a cab. Sloan pouts momentarily, but wishes her luck and tells her to call in the morning. Or afternoon, or whenever, since they’re standing in the foyer of Sloan’s apartment at almost 4:15 AM on a Saturday.

By the time she hails a taxi and returns to their Tribeca apartment building, it’s nearly 4:30 AM and birds are chirping.

Will is sitting mostly upright on the couch when she staggers in, dropping her keys in the bowl on the table in the entryway, letting her purse fall heavily to the floor. His head snaps up when he hears her heels on the wood floor, and he stands, brushing his palms over the thighs of his sweatpants.

“So um… are we gonna finish this?” he asks, tiredly shifting his weight between his feet.

Mac bites her lip, clenching the plastic bag in her fist, not quite able to meet his eye. “We um… we have bigger problems.”

“Mac… we’re not going to bed angry.” Will stumbles, a little bit, and reaches for her. “The last time I went to bed angry at you, you wound up halfway across the world.” And what she just said to him clicks, and he squints at her. “What bigger problems?”

Clumsily she fumbles one of the two-packs of pregnancy tests out of the bag, and holds it out in front of her, in his line of sight. “I’m ten days late.” She watches as realization slides across his face, and then laughs a little, because there’s not much else she can do. “Well, problem. Not _problems._ Although it could just be stress, I haven’t taken a test yet, but I missed my appointment for the IUD because of the bombing, and then—”

The frozen look of shock that had taken hold of his features thaws, and he nods along. “We got married and we forgot that—”

“Yeah.” He looks nervous, she thinks, but she can barely feel her legs and she thinks she might be trembling, a bit, so she tries to continue on like she’s unaffected. “I would be five weeks, which is two weeks actually, and I’ve been off the pill for a while, because we talked after Sandy Hook and so I switched to—”

“Yeah,” Will says, somewhat stilted. He reaches out for her again, and this time she lets him pull her towards him, because all she can do is clutch the bag to her middle and nod jerkily, breathing through her mouth in an attempt to control her breathing. “For when we wanted to—”

“I’m gonna be a sideshow,” she blurts out, feeling the vague sense of panic that’s been tingling in her fingers and toes all night suddenly flare and coalesce into stomach. “I’m also not likely to carry it to term, because I was _stabbed_ and I have an unstable abdomen and I’m on antidepressants that are known to cause intrauterine growth retardation and even if I don’t lose it before the end of, because of stress, or my age… _if_ I’m pregnant, _if_ I don’t miscarry… the testimony starts in two months and that’s _if_ they don’t file for another continuance and it’s gonna go on, and on, and I’m gonna be a sideshow, you know.”

She can see it, sitting in the courtroom, hands folded over her stomach and she’s large and awkward and uncomfortable, and Nina Howard is testifying about how she fucked Will while knowing that he was just using her to get over his EP, and that’s if she’s lucky. “If I’m still—if I’m even, and the baby’s gonna be born _right_ as a federal judge is ordering us to hand over our life savings—okay you need _say_ something because I’m flipping out.”

MacKenzie takes another deep breath, and another, dropping the bag to the side and lifting a hand to her brow, worrying her thumb in a circle over her right temple, trying to breathe so the growing look of concern on his face doesn’t freak her out even more. “I’ve been flipping out since I looked at my calendar four hours ago and I realized I am ten days late, because I want our baby but I’m terrified, so please just say something—”

“You are not going to be a sideshow,” he tells her, low and calming. “If you are pregnant, which we will find out in a few minutes, you are not going to be a sideshow,” he reassures her, lifting his hands to frame her face. “You will be the mother of my child,” he says, with a small quirk of a smile that makes her want to kiss him, so she does. Will’s arms come around her waist and she slides her hands into his hair, stepping out of her heels and he follows her down, bending and wrapping his arms around her more fully.

She pulls back from him slowly, breaking the kiss into short, sweet pecks, sighing in a way that finally indicates her exhaustion. Will wraps a lock of hair around his finger before brushing it back from her face, and then sets to unbuttoning her blouse, unzipping her skirt, pulling her towards their bedroom and, more importantly, the master bathroom.

Sighing again, with deadened limbs she peels off her clothes, leaving herself in her underwear, until Will tosses her an old tee shirt, which she slips over her head.

Sighing and exhausted himself, he pads over to her, placing his hands at the sides of her waist and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “And you won’t have to worry about being the pregnant wife having to sit by while her husband’s ex testifies on the stand because I’ve made phone calls, I’ve found people willing to sign affidavits swearing to Nina’s history of extortion… I’m going to protect you, MacKenzie. And the baby, if there is one. I won’t let you get hurt because of me.”

_I’m never going to hurt you again._

Pursing her lips so doesn’t cry, she nods. “Okay.”

“And if you’re pregnant,” he continues, looking her straight in the eye. He looks as scared as she does, and as tired. “We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. Later today. I will pay whatever I have to pay to see the best obstetrician in the city on a Saturday, and we’ll figure out what we have to do. We’ll make a plan.”

“Okay.” She nods again, wishing she had come home hours ago, thinking about how a year ago he would have used that against her. _You looked at the calendar four hours ago? And you’re just telling me now?_ She needs to take the test now, before Will keeps being so sweet, before she psyches herself into wanting this too much, because if she does that then she won’t be pregnant. She’ll be barren, probably, because that’s their luck. “I’m gonna go—I’ll be right out.”

Choosing one of the three-packs (Sloan, it would appear, flung a random assortment onto the conveyer belt in the checkout line, which works just fine for Mac) she disappears into the bathroom.

A few minutes later, they wind up huddled together on the bed, the timer on Will’s phone dropping down from three minutes.

“I’ll get fat,” she says in a sleep-deprived attempt at humor, slumping down against his side.

He puts his arm around her, half-propping her up against his chest before looking nervously at the timer. “You’ll be beautiful,” he answers, rubbing his palms up and down her arms. “And I will buy you every designer maternity dress you set your sights on.”

That, she has no doubt about. He’ll be insufferable, if she gives him even a fraction of a chance. Regardless though, she figures, if the tests read positive she’ll be needing a new wardrobe of work clothes, and court clothes, and she’s trying very hard not to think about testifying in federal court while six months pregnant.

She tries not to think about other things, about stress levels and the medications she’ll have to go off of, or modify, and miscarriage rates. And just how _Pyrrhic_ her victory could get.

(MacKenzie’s not mad anymore, just tired and worried. Because she and Will are good at wanting things but not at having them, and now’s just not the right time and she should have come home hours ago, before the baby solidified in her mind as a probability and now she already loves it, wants to protect it, and if she loses it—

She and Will can get through it, but some days they’re an inch away from a breakdown instead of a mile and how much can they take before even winning against Jerry becomes hollow?

Fucking Nina.)

“I’ll get fat and it will be entirely your fault,” she jokes shakily, turning her head to burrow it in his neck. “You’ll have to buy me flats, too, since my center of gravity will be shot by the freakishly large—and it’s going to be big, it’s your kid, mister—child growing in me.”

He kisses her forehead. “I will look forward to taking care of your every need.”

“I’ll get stretch marks. And ruin my figure—I’m not young. And all those celebrities just get liposuction, and have personal trainers. I’ll have bigger breasts, though. Consolation prize.” She rests her hands over his, laughing still, somehow.

“And I will love your stretch marks,” he says, arms coming more solidly around her, and she shifts so that she’s almost sitting between his legs. He looks decidedly worried, and Mac doesn’t know if it’s about her, or them, or the maybe-baby, and she just wants to tell him that she’s not angry anymore about Nina, hasn’t been in a long time but she was so stressed today, and maybe she’s hormonal. Yes, they still need to talk but she’s tired and anxious and just wants to curl up against him and press her knees in against his hips, her fingertips into his skin, feel his breath on her while she falls asleep.

She laughs, more than a little anxiously. “You are decidedly optimistic about this.”

Will huffs a tired laugh. “Yeah, well, it’s your body so you’re the one who has the right to freak out, so I’ve appointed myself director of morale.”

“Oh _god_ ,” she says with a snort, before finally the panic breaks through again and her breathing shapes into something closer to hyperventilation when she sees there’s only thirty seconds left.

His voice is low in her ear, and he holds her close while the clock ticks down the last ten seconds. “We’ll figure it out.”

The alarm trills, and she leans forward to flip the tests over one by one.

And promptly begins to cry.

Cupping her hand over her mouth, with a shaking hand she picks up one of the pregnancy tests to hold closer to her face. Tears streaming down her face, she swallows down her fear (for however long, but for now) and smiles, shrieking when Will all but tackles her to the mattress, raining kisses down onto her cheeks, chin, before finally landing his lips on her own.

Laughing still, MacKenzie manages to wrap her legs around his hips, sliding the soles of her feet up and down his calves before pulling her knees up high enough that she curl her toes around the waist of his sweatpants and start dragging them down his thighs. Not that she necessarily gets far, her hands far too preoccupied with roaming the expanse of his back and she wants his hair between her fingers and his kisses are heady and drugging and—

“We’re having a baby,” he murmurs, eyes shining, before nipping softly at her lower lip.

She laughs harder, because their timing is terrible and there’s no guarantee anything will be alright, but women give birth in fields and there are crack babies in pretty good shape, so hopefully the kid won’t have two heads and even if it does they have the money to take care of that.

“We’re having a baby,” she whispers back, leaning up and sliding her tongue into his mouth.

Moaning happily, he pulls his mouth from hers, and nuzzles his face into her hair, and then turns his head to trail a chain of kisses from her ear to her neck to her sternum. Breathing deeply into her chest, he fans out one hand over her lower abdomen.

“Are we okay?” he asks softly, and Mac is reminded that he sat up for four and a half hours waiting for her to come home because he was afraid of what would happen if either of them went to bed angry.

She lets him take one of her hands and join it with his.

“I think we have some things to talk about, but that I’d much rather you come back up here and kiss me again.” Will’s smiling, and the sun is coming up, and they’re both going to crash very, very soon, but he crawls back up her body to bracket her face with his forearms and complies with her wishes for a minute. “We can talk after we get some sleep. I’m sorry, but I am ridiculously tired, and Sloan is going to bug me around noon because she was the one who had to buy the tests—”

He balks, and she starts to giggle, realizing that their secret is up to _Sloan_ , who while entirely too good hearted is not talented at keeping her head where sensitive information is involved.

“That’s what took so long?” he asks, a little incredulous.

She thwacks him on the shoulder. “Well, neither of us can really be seen—”

He snorts, letting her bully him onto his back. “Buying pregnancy tests, yes, I think Reese’s head would explode if that got into _Star_ or—”

Shrugging, she rolls on top of him, propping her chin on his chest after moving the pregnancy tests onto her nightstand.  

“I’m surprised yours didn’t,” she says before realizing that the words have come out of her mouth.

Will frowns at that. Not mad, not disappointed. Drained, of course, and a little frazzled. One of his hands comes up to the side of her face and he traces one of her cheekbones with the back of his index finger; she watches him re-evaluate three years’ worth of punishments, their knock-down drag-out from this evening. The apologetic face makes a brief appearance, but then he takes a deep breath and lets it go.

“Why would it?” he asks, still brushing her hair out of her face, shifting a little so they’re leaned a bit onto their sides. “Am I a little blindsided? Yes. Am I worried for you—both of you? Yes. But like I said. Mac, we’ll make an appointment, as soon as you want. We’ll make a plan. We’ll adjust our schedules, and I’ll beat back the legal team with a stick so you can get all your rest and I’ll drag you to meals or well, not drag, I won’t drag my pregnant wife—”

Yawning, Mac takes his arms and puts them around her waist before leaning back to hit the switch on the bedside lamp. “You’re right, I’m sorry. But how about you let your pregnant wife get some sleep?”

Lifting a hand to cup his cheek, she traces his jaw with her thumb, smiling as widely as she can.

He smiles back, the stupid, goofy, earnest kind of smile that makes her want to kiss him.

So she does.  

“Ah, yes. That I can do.” He pulls the sheets tighter around her, before making to roll out of bed. “I’m gonna go make some calls.”

“No,” Mac protests, whining a bit and wrapping her limbs around him. “You’re going to stay in bed with your pregnant wife and let her fall asleep on you.”

Will freezes, before stilling and then settling back against the mattress.

“Sound good to you?” she murmurs, wriggling in tiny increments until there’s very little space left between them.

“Yeah.”

His hand hovers, nervously, she thinks, over the slope of her lower abdomen—eight inches or so below the jagged silvery line of her stab wound—before resting there for a few moments on its way to her hip. Kissing his collarbone, she moves her hand to lay over his heart.

She has to believe that their victory in this war of attrition won’t be hollow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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